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Tag Archives: #Syria

The press highlights today the meeting in the city of Sochi between the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in which they ratified the will to confront terrorism and develop this country.

Publications from Syrian TV, Sama TV and the News Agency Sana, reflected that in the meeting held yesterday the two leaders highlighted the successful bilateral collaboration in the fight against terrorist groups in Syria.

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(P L )Prior to the US, UK and French strike on Syria at dawn Saturday, China called on all parties concerned through its ambassador to the UN, Ma Zhaoxu, to remain calm and exercise restraint over the situation in Syria.

He described it as perilous, adding that it’s at a crossroads of war and peace.

Addressing a special session of the UN Security Council called for by Russia, he Chinese Ambassador urged the solve the issue peacefully through consultation and dialogue.

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(P L) Cuba has strongly condemned the new attack by the US, United Kingdom and France on Syrian military and civilian facilities using as a pretext the alleged used of chemical weapons by Damascus forces in Douma.

This unilateral action, ignoring the UN Security Council, is a ‘flagrant violation of International Law and the UN Chapter, while being an outrage against a sovereign State that worsens the conflict in Syria and the region,’ a statement by the Cuban Foreign Ministry reads. Continue reading →

UN aid workers are guilty of sexually harassing and abusing Syrian women and forcing them to deliver sexual favors in return for aid supplies, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said.

“Examples were given of women or girls marrying officials for a short period of time for ‘sexual services’ in order to receive meals; distributors asking for telephone numbers of women and girls; giving them lifts to their houses ‘to take something in return’ or obtaining distributions ‘in exchange for a visit to her home’ or ‘in exchange for services, such as spending a night with them,’” the report said.

According to the recent report which analyzed gender-based violence in the region, more vulnerable targets such as girls and widows or female IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons), those left without male “protectors”.

Danielle Spencer, a humanitarian charity adviser and the author of a 2015 investigation into sexual violence in Jordanian refugee camps told the BBC that aid workers wilfully ignore gender-based violence.

Turkey said it will normalize relations with the U.S. if the Syrian Kurdish force YPG agrees to move out of Manbij region.

Turkey has proposed to the United States that Kurdish YPG fighters withdraw to east of the Euphrates river in Syria and that Turkish and U.S. troops be stationed together in the country’s Manbij area, a Turkish official said Friday.

The United States spent at least $12 billion in Syria-related military and civilian expenses in the four years from 2014 through 2017, according to former U.S. ambassador Robert Ford, Ben Norton reports.

By Ben Norton

The United States spent at least $12 billion in Syria-related military and civilian expenses in the four years from 2014 through 2017, according to the former U.S. ambassador to the country.

This $12 billion is in addition to the billions more spent to pursue regime change in Syria in the previous three years, after war broke out in 2011.

This striking figure provides a further glimpse of the exorbitant sums of money the U.S. spent trying to topple the government in Damascus. It also bluntly contradicts claims by Syrian opposition supporters that the former administration of President Barack Obama “did nothing” in Syria, or that it supposedly did not seek regime change fervently enough.

“The cost of US military operations in Syria between FY 2014 and the end of FY 2017 was between $3 and $4 billion,” Ford said. “In addition to the cost of those military operations, the FY 2017 budget request included $430 [million] to build local security forces and the FY 2018 request was for $500 million.”

The former ambassador did not distinguish what proportion of this spending went specifically to fighting ISIS. Although he made clear that some of it was directed at the Syrian opposition.

Ford also reported that the U.S. spent $7.7 billion in humanitarian aid efforts in Syria in those same four years. This figure cannot be excluded from the overall cost of the U.S. regime change mission, however, because U.S. spending on humanitarian aid in Syria has often been explicitly politicized.

The U.S. State Department, USAID, and other government agencies have refused to provide humanitarian aid to government-held areas in Syria and have instead expressly used the funding to bankroll the political, civil, and health infrastructure of rebel-held territory, including areas that are governed by Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra. The Guardian exposed how similar aid initiatives by the British government financed the activities of al-Nusra and other extremist Salafi-jihadist militias.

Ford acknowledged in his testimony that U.S. humanitarian aid to Syria was heavily politicized, explaining:

“The U.S. also has deployed a small civilian team into Syria charged with initial reconstruction and building new local governance or improving on existing local governance. If it sounds like nation-building, it is but on a smaller scale. USAID and other civilian agencies have provided $875 million in non-lethal and stabilization aid to opposition-controlled areas in Syria since FY 2012. Last year alone the US provided about $200 million.”

This politicized humanitarian funding has been part of a concerted effort to undermine the Syrian government’s control over Syrian territory by creating independent political administrations, civil society organizations, health institutions, and infrastructure that are outside of its control, effectively establishing de facto autonomous governments that survive on U.S. funding.

In fact, Ford went so far in the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing as to condemn United Nations humanitarian aid programs,claiming they are “basically subsidizing Assad” by supporting civilians in government-held territory (which comprises the vast majority of the country).

“If you add all these numbers up, US military and civilian costs in Syria over the past four years are at least $12 billion,” Ford said in his written congressional testimony. “That’s a lot of money. And it’s not clear when those outlays will stop.”

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Chinese Ambassador in Syria, Qi Qianjin, declared that the government of the Asian country and Damascus signed agreements in 2017 to provide humanitarian aid to this State worth more than 40 million dollars, medical sources spread today. Continue reading →

A U.S. official claimed the attack was carried out in “self-defense” and said airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition were involved in the operation.

More than 100 fighters aligned with Syrian President Bashar al Assad were killed in Syria’s Deir al-Zor province after U.S.-led coalition and coalition-backed local forces thwarted an allegedly large attack late Wednesday and early Thursday, a U.S. official told Reuters.